Trump attacks Cuomo, Gillibrand in upstate speech

UTICA — President Donald Trump blasted two of his potential 2020 rivals during a speech in upstate Utica on Monday, faulting Gov. Andrew Cuomo and U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand at a fundraiser for a Republican member of Congress.

It’s the first time since he took office that Trump has attacked Cuomo, a Democrat seeking a third term who has been positioning himself for a possible 2020 presidential run. Over the last year, Cuomo has been increasingly on the attack against his fellow Queens native, assailing the president for his new tax law, his immigration policies and his stance on gun control.

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Trump seemed to hark back to 2017, when Cuomo refused to attack the president by name and pushed him to spend infrastructure money in New York.

“He called me and he said, ‘I’ll never run for president against you.’ But maybe he wants to. Oh, please do it. He did say that. Maybe he means it,” Trump said at the Hotel Utica during an event for Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-New Hartford). “Anybody who runs against Trump suffers.”

The president also attacked Cuomo for not permitting natural gas hydrofracking, which the governor’s departments of health and environmental conservation effectively banned in December 2014.

Trump suggested that the lack of drilling in New York has led to drilling elsewhere.

“It’s so sad to see. We had the potential to do it better than anybody, but it’s dissipating. Because that stuff, it flows. It flows,” he said. “You could have had no taxes — you could have had the lowest taxes instead of the highest taxes. It’s very sad to see what’s happened to New York.”

Hydrofracking supporters, including many Republicans, said it would bring jobs and economic activity to regions of the state that have long languished, including communities in the Marcellus Shale formation in the Southern Tier.

Environmentalists say that fracking techniques can pollute drinking water and support a fossil fuel economy from which the state should move away. There were also concerns about local land rights.

Trump also noted that Utica is a dozen miles from the village of Ilion, the founding site of the Remington Arms corporation, and said Cuomo “wants to take away your Second Amendment.”

Cuomo responded with a tweet, saying that the president and the National Rifle Association were "bankrupt bedfellows."

The president also praised Chele Farley, a private equity executive who is challenging Gillibrand in November. She traveled to Utica for Tenney’s event.

Trump said he had seen Farley on television, and said she was “really working hard, and honestly on the merits, you should win."

Trump belittled Gillibrand as “just a puppet of [Chuck] Schumer,” New York’s senior senator and the chamber's minority leader.

“She’s been up to my office looking for campaign contributions. She’s very aggressive on contributions, but she’s not very aggressive on getting things done. … Has she gotten anything done? One bill to re-name a post office. You just go in and fight,” Trump said. “Chele, you may surprise a lot of people.”

Gillibrand spokesman Glen Caplin responded by referring to the recent indictment of Rep. Chris Collins (R-Clarence), a Trump ally, on insider trading charges, and the scandal that forced Tom Price to resign as Trump's secretary of health and human services.

“Donald Trump refused to support the 9/11 health bill, so no wonder he has no clue that she passed it twice," Caplin said. "But, considering Tom Price and Chris Collins, you would think he would remember her passing the STOCK Act,” he added, referring to a 2012 measure designed to fight insider trading.